Pheu Thai's Polling Collapse

And the protest on June 28th

I want to give a shout-out to this flowchart by Dr. Napon Jatusripitak, which very clearly outlines possible political scenarios over the next few weeks and months. Check it out!

The NIDA Poll released their quarterly polling yesterday, with results that will send some seismic shockwaves throughout Thailand’s political sphere. This poll was conducted between 19-25 June, so it was fielded entirely after Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s voice call with Hun Sen was leaked, and while there was considerable uncertainty over which parties would remain in the coalition.

The NIDA poll asks respondents to identify 1) the person they support in becoming prime minister the most today and 2) the party that they currently support. Before looking at the poll results, I do want to state some caveats that are important when looking at the NIDA poll. Firstly, Thais do not vote directly for a prime minister, and so support for an individual does not directly translate to support for their party. Secondly, the NIDA party polling does not necessarily indicate how many seats a party will receive, because it tracks more closely with the popularity of that party on the party-list ballot but less with constituency results (where voters also take into consideration the individual attributes of their local candidate).

With that said, these are the polling results that NIDA released:

Choice for Prime Minister:

• Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut (People’s Party): 31.48%

• Undecided: 19.88%

• Prayut Chan-o-cha: 12.72%

• Anutin Charnvirakul (Bhumjaithai): 9.64%

• Paetongtarn Shinawatra (Pheu Thai): 9.20%

• Pirapan Salirathavibhaga (United Thai Nation): 6.48%

• Sudarat Keyuraphan (Thai Sang Thai): 6.12%

• Prawit Wongsuwan (Palang Pracharath): 1.48%

• Other: 2.92%

Party Support:

• People’s Party: 46.08%

• United Thai Nation: 13.24%

• Pheu Thai: 11.52%

• Bhumjaithai: 9.76%

• Undecided: 7.72%

• Thai Sang Thai: 4.20%

• Palang Pracharath: 2.88%

• Democrat: 2.68%

• Other: 1.76%

A couple of takeaways below.

1. This polling represents a remarkable cratering in public support for Paetongtarn and Pheu Thai, and the first quantifiable evidence that voters care about the Hun Sen attacks. During the first quarter, NIDA found Paetongtarn polling at 30.90%. In just a few months, her support has gone down to just 9.20%. Pheu Thai was supported by 28.05% of voters in the January poll; their support has gone down seventeen points to 11.52% — third place behind United Thai Nation. It is reasonable to suspect that much of this has to do with the voice call that was released just before the polls, and it indicates that voters are paying attention to Hun Sen’s leaks and taking them seriously. Of course, the fact that the poll was fielded immediately after the voice call means that the leak was looming large in voters’ minds, and this effect could dissipate as time goes by. But such a collapse in voter support will be highly worrying to Pheu Thai’s strategists regardless of whether they claw back some of it — and with Hun Sen still on the attack, the odds are not in Pheu Thai’s favor that voters will forget about this issue anytime soon.

2. The People’s Party is now polling close to where the Move Forward Party was before it was dissolved. In the second quarter of 2024, NIDA found the MFP polling at 49.20% — a peak before it was dissolved soon afterwards. The People’s Party has not matched these highs, polling at around 37% in the previous two quarters. Yet they now poll at 46.08%, close to where the MFP was at its peak. This large gain suggests that it is a beneficiary of Pheu Thai’s polling collapse, and it explains why the party is so eager for Paetongtarn to dissolve parliament as it expects to make gains. However, PP leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut still lags considerably behind his own party. Pita Limjaroenrat’s polling used to more or less match his party’s, given or take a couple percentage points. However, Natthaphong sits almost 15% behind the PP’s polling — suggesting that almost a year into his tenure, he either remains low in name recognition or deemed as unsuitable as prime minister (or both) by even some who support his party. This raises an interesting question: if parliament is dissolved today, would Natthaphong’s nomination as the party’s PM candidate prove a drag? To what extent was the MFP’s success in 2023 a result of “Pita fever,” something that the PP cannot replicate?

3. Bhumjaithai has made notable gains which suggest it could gain many party-list seats if an election were held today. Bhumjaithai’s electoral success in 2023 was driven by its constituency candidates; they won 13.49% of the constituency vote but only 2.99% of the party-list vote. The NIDA polling tends to track more closely with voters’ party-list choice; Bhumjaithai polled at only 3.35% in the first quarter of this year, tracking with its last election result. But this quarter, Bhumjaithai has increased its share of support to 9.76%. That is a substantial result that would net the party considerably more than the three party-list seats it received in 2023. Even more importantly, it demonstrates that voters are beginning to turn to Bhumjaithai as a choice that represents their ideological leanings, not just as a source of good constituency MPs who take care of their localities. This is most likely thanks to Bhumjaithai’s decision to leave the Pheu Thai government immediately after the voice call leak. Anutin Charnvirakul’s substantial increase in support as PM also shows that voters are taking more seriously the idea that he could one day form a government.

4. What are the implications of Prayut’s relatively high level of support? The idea of Prayut returning as prime minister was initially largely dismissed because he has already joined the Privy Council. It is likely for this reason that previous NIDA polls appear not to have included him as a choice. But they placed him back as an option this time, and the poll reveals that 12.72% of people would back his return as prime minister — more than currently favor Paetongtarn and almost double the support of the United Thai Nation Party’s current leader, Pirapan Salirathavibhaga. I would still rate this scenario as unlikely, but according to this poll Prayut is the most popular of the current coalition parties’ prime minister candidates (although he is no longer a member of the UTN). If Paetongtarn is removed from office over the next few weeks…stranger things have happened. Additionally, it is noteworthy that the United Thai Nation Party is still on an upward trend (its support has increased in every poll since December) even as the party is deeply divided. I suspect that this poll does not yet fully reflect the fallout from the party’s decision to remain in the coalition, as there was considerable uncertainty about what Pirapan would do for days after the voice leak.

5. The overall state of the race is the “orange camp” far ahead, but the “conservative camp” a major player and the “red camp” far behind. The poll shows that the People’s Party is well positioned to win the next election, although how many seats its support will translate to is hard to predict because we do not know how well the PP will do on the constituency ballot. The conservative camp is split into many parties, but added together they capture close to a third of voters. If the UTN continue to be split and is unable to compete effectively at the next election, and these voters consolidate further behind Bhumjaithai (not a guaranteed proposition), the latter will be poised to make major gains as it becomes the main conservative standard-bearer. If that does happen, Pheu Thai could very conceivably fall into third place not only in opinion polling (it already is in third place right now) but also in actual seats. It could, for the first time since Thaksin Shinawatra’s landslide victory in 2001, not be in a position to form a government at all.

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The June 28th Protest

The June 28th protest. Image credits: Thai Rath

The June 28th anti-government rally that was held at Victory Monument was the largest demonstration held yet since Pheu Thai came to power in 2023. Once again, it is an indication of the effect that the Paetongtarn voice call has on voters, as no other issue has been able to re-kindle anti-Shinawatra sentiment in this way. One key leader, Jatuporn Promphan, said that the protests will escalate if the Constitutional Court suspends Paetongtarn from conducting her duties but she still refuses to resign.

Yesterday, the rally was overshadowed by the People’s Party’s statement condemning the statements some speakers made that the party said “created an opening for a military coup.” One statement that was widely circulated was a segment of former yellow shirt leader Sondhi Limthongkul’s speech, where he said that “[they] can launch a coup whenever if there is a crisis and it cannot be fixed via politics,” but if a coup must happen, “please do not bring in a general to run the country again.” It did not appear that most speakers endorsed a coup and so far there is little indication that one is imminent. But it is clear that the People’s Party is trying to walk a fine line between criticizing Pheu Thai while not associating itself with the conservatives organizing the rally. The former election commissioner Somchai Srisutthiyakorn criticized the PP for not exhausting its options in parliament, such as calling for a no-confidence debate, in order to prevent calls for a coup.

This week, eyes will not be on the streets or on parliament but instead on the courts, as it is possible that the Constitutional Court will decide whether or not to suspend Paetongtarn as it considers the petition against her. We have another rocky period in Thai politics ahead of us.